‘I heard what happened,’ said Louise. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She looked around; there was something missing. ‘Has she taken the dog?’
Tim nodded. He turned down the sound of the TV.
‘She told you about me and my husband, I presume.’ Louise tried to laugh. ‘We’re sort of in the same boat, aren’t we?’
Tim wore his old blue tracksuit. There was a growth of stubble on his chin; it made him look surprisingly raffish. She urged herself to find him attractive. He wore an unfamiliar pair of gold-rimmed glasses. Maybe he just wore them at home.
‘Do you mind me coming here?’ she asked.
He shook his head. He took her coat and laid it over the back of the settee.
‘I just felt so lonely,’ she said.
‘Are you warm enough? I could switch on the other bar.’
She shook her head. He went into the kitchen. She heard the clatter of crockery. On the TV, a blonde girl sat on a sofa. holding hands with a young man. They simpered soundlessly. The children were addicted to Blind Date; they liked sneering at the couples. So did Robert.
Louise smoothed down her dress. There was a ladder in her tights, on the knee. She hadn’t seen it when she had pulled them on. She was eighteen years old again, sitting in a strange room, her insides fluttering. On Tim’s supper plate lay the remains of a pork pie.
Tim came in, carrying a tray of tea things. As he lowered it the cups shivered.
‘You haven’t got anything stronger, have you?’ she asked. ‘I’ve been drinking whisky like there’s no tomorrow.’ She stopped – what a strange expression to use.
‘Of course.’ He fetched a whisky bottle and two glasses. He stood still, looking at her. ‘I can’t believe you’re here.’
She smiled. ‘Nor can I.’
‘Water?’
She shook her head, took the glass and swallowed it in one gulp. ‘I feel really shitty. It wasn’t me she left for – I mean, because of me?’
‘No. Of course not.’ He refilled her glass. ‘It was nothing to do with you.’
‘Can you sit down?’ she asked. ‘You’re making me nervous.’
He sat on the settee, his knees pressed together like a virgin. How thin he was; how sloping his shoulders! Through his glasses he gazed at her. She imagined removing them and putting them on the table.
She moved across and sat down next to him. ‘I just wanted to be here,’ she began. ‘What you said to me that night – well, it was so lovely. Just to hear words like that.’ She recrossed her legs. Her tights made a faint, rasping sound. ‘It was so nice of you.’
‘What do you mean, nice?’
‘I thought about it a lot afterwards. What you said.’
‘You did?’ He raised his eyebrows.
‘So I came here.’
He put his glass on the table. ‘I think you should go.’
‘It’s all right. I don’t want to.’ She touched his hand with her forefinger. ‘You see, I don’t have to any more.’
‘No, but I want you to.’
There was a silence. Louise fixed her eyes on the TV screen. Cilia Black giggled soundlessly.
‘You’re making a bit of a fool of yourself, aren’t you?’ Tim got up. He straightened the ornaments on the mantelpiece. ‘It really isn’t very nice. I expected better of you.’ He turned to look at her. ‘I don’t terribly like being used, you know. Even by someone as delightful as yourself. Do you really think you can come in here and – it’s not very nice.’ He moved a china dog. His voice was trembling – from anger, she realised now. ‘I suppose you want to pay your husband back, it’s some sort of tit-for-tat, something like that. So you snap your fingers for poor old Tim. I wish I could oblige but I really don’t want to. Strange though that might seem.’ He picked up her coat. ‘I think it would be best if we forgot this ever happened, don’t you?’
Louise found it difficult to stand up. Her legs seemed to have liquified. Finally she got to her feet.
‘I think I’ll stick to the photos, if you don’t mind.’ He held out her coat. ‘I know it’s pathetic, but at least I’m not doing anybody any harm.’
It seemed a mile, the journey down the stairs and across the shop. Finally, she reached the door. Tim unlocked it and held it open.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and stumbled into the darkness.
Until that Saturday night Jamie had committed no crime. As a child, he had eaten a Kit-Kat that his friend had stolen from the shop near their school in Chelsea. He had smoked dope, and planned to smoke a great deal more when he travelled around Europe that summer. His mother, in her haphazard way, had tried to instil some morals in him; his father, never. In October he was going to study psychology, which would no doubt acquaint him with the criminal mind. But he had never truly entered this area of human activity.
Ah, but how easy it was! He sauntered, with Trevor, past the parked cars. Trevor had straightened up; he looked purposeful, professional – more concentrated somehow, as if his molecules had bunched together. He seemed to know, intuitively, where to strike.
And now he did it. There was a grace in the way he stopped beside the Escort and looked around. He looked as if he had been bred for this moment, like an athlete when he steps onto the track. It was dark; the street was empty. He fiddled with the door and then they were in. The interior was tidy; it smelled of pine deodorant. Travelling salesman, Jamie thought. Then he thought: a Crime Victim.
The engine roared into life; the very roar sounded lawless. They were off. Jamie was flung back. He hadn’t buckled himself in; you didn’t hot-rod a car and then strap yourself into a bloody seat-belt.
They drove out of High Wycombe. An oncoming car flashed them.
‘Lights!’ hissed Jamie.
Trevor, who was stoned, fumbled at the dashboard. The headlights flared. Now they were speeding through an illuminated tunnel, hedges high on either side. They were plunging down a plug-hole; somebody had pulled the plug and they were off, spinning down.
‘Wicked!’ Trevor snorted.
Exhilaration swept through Jamie; his balls tightened. He felt alive, down to his fingertips. What power! You broke in, you roared off, you just did it! He forgot everything: the confusion and the anger, sod it all. They roared past the darkened bulk of Tesco; they gave it the finger as they passed. The speedometer inched up . . . 80 . . . 85 . . . 90 . . .
Jamie shouted: ‘This is better than sex!’ His few couplings, even they were blown away. Trevor was careering towards London. How glamorous he seemed, now, as he sat at the wheel! Jamie felt like a swooning female, Trevor’s date for the night. He clutched the door-handle as they swerved around a corner.
And then something happened. Later, he couldn’t remember what caused it. He was stoned, too. But now a gate was rearing up in front of them and splintering like matchsticks. Trevor cackled like a maniac.
‘Hey, watch out!’ yelled Jamie.
A sea of mud rushed towards them. Jamie rammed his hands against the dashboard. He ducked. The car slewed to a halt.
Trevor giggled. He crashed the gear into reverse. The wheels spun.
‘Abandon fucking ship!’ he shrieked.
Jamie flung open the door. ‘Women and children first!’ He half-toppled into the mud.
He watched himself with curiosity as he picked himself up. See, like a cartoon character, he too sprang up, unharmed. He seemed to be in the middle of a ploughed field. He and Trevor ran, in great leaping strides. He turned to look at the car. The twin rods of the headlights shone in the darkness. The lit interior looked oddly homely.
‘Come on, dickbrain,’ said Trevor. They stumbled across to the gap where the gate had been. Jamie picked his way through the planks of wood; he slipped in the tyre-ruts. His knee hurt; it must have hit the dashboard.
They ran up the lane, over the brow of the hill. Jamie paused for breath. The sky was suffused with the orange glow of London. Below lay the lights of a village. It was Wingham Wallace; he was only a mile from home.
> The next week Louise went up to London to see her father. They had arranged to meet for lunch in a restaurant near Marble Arch. Why Marble Arch? She didn’t know; her father inhabited a new territory now.
As she walked down the street she gazed irritably at the passers-by. What a lot of them there were, jostling and hostile. Until recently she had enjoyed coming to London. Now it seemed a place filled with strangers who cared nothing for her and who had homes of their own to go to. All her life doors had opened and the sunshine flooded in; now they had slammed shut. Or, to be accurate, they had closed quietly and regretfully. I think you’d better go now, Tim had said.
She passed a bookshop. Playing with Fire was displayed in the window. She hadn’t thought about her sister and Erin for what seemed like decades, nor about her mother who had seemed so rejuvenated by the man from the small ads. Louise was closed off from other people’s lives; grief and bitterness had sealed her away from the world, which now seemed insolently heartless. Fuck you, it brayed at her.
Her father looked indecently well. He looked years younger than she felt. He wore a yellow pullover; he looked as breezy as a golfing pro.
‘Patch it up,’ he said. ‘Come on, Lou. Tell him you forgive him and give the bugger another chance.’
‘Funny. That’s just what Mum said.’ She gazed at the menu. ‘You didn’t try to patch it up, remember? We came round and pleaded with you, you didn’t listen to a word we said. You just bailed out.’
‘But you’ve got kids.’
‘We’re kids too. Just grown older. It still hurts, you know. You bailed out from all of us.’ She looked at the pasta. Fettucine . . . linguine . . . It was all the same stuff, flour and water. ‘You made us feel our childhood was all pretend, you were just waiting to leave.’
He looked chastened, just for a moment. ‘Is that why you came to see me? To tell me this?’
She shook her head. ‘I want to ask for your help.’
‘Funny way to go about it. More Maddy’s line.’
She thought: I’ve lost my charm. It’s so tiring being charming. She took a breath and told him what had happened. ‘He transferred all this money from our account. I never look at the bank statements, I hadn’t a due what was happening.’ She paused. ‘Robert’s ruined us. I don’t know what to do. I’ll have to sell the house but I don’t own it any more, so that doesn’t help.’
Her father listened but in a detached way, as if she were reading the news on the radio. He mouthed words of sympathy. He said: ‘You poor love. I never trusted the bloke, you know that. Remember when he wrote Imogen’s homework for her and she got an A? What a way to bring up a kid.’ He said this but he seemed miles away.
‘I just wondered . . .’ She paused. ‘If you could lend me some money.’
Gordon rubbed the side of his nose. He sighed, and gazed at her across the table. ‘My love, I don’t believe that’s possible. Not now.’
‘What’s happened?’
He leaned down, lifted up his briefcase and snapped it open. He passed her an estate agent’s leaflet. ‘Had my offer accepted yesterday.’ He pointed to the photograph. It showed a large, red-brick house. ‘April wasn’t so keen at the beginning but I wore her down. When I want something I’m a persistent sod. Like it?’
He couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice. Louise thought: what a monster he is. She thought: happiness, like grief, makes monsters of us all.
‘Wandsworth,’ he said. ‘Well, Wandsworth borders. Ten minutes’ walk and you’re on the Common.’
She looked at the photograph. ‘It’s huge.’
‘Maybe I’m a bit mad, but aren’t we all? There’s a touch of subsidence, scared people off, but that’s no problem.’ He took the photo and gazed at it as if it were his new-born child. ‘Trouble is, love, it’s cleaned me out. Cashed in my pension, redeemed my policies, the lot. I could manage maybe a couple of thou, but I think you’re talking about a few more big ones than that, right?’
She nodded. ‘Just a few.’
She snapped a bread stick in half. She thought: happiness has stolen my father away from me; he has entered another life now, where he has no need of me. My whole family has other lives now. So that’s that, then. I’m on my own.
After work, Prudence went to see her mother. Dorothy was still living in the bedsitter, a few houses away on the other side of the road. There was a studenty feel to the place – attic window, Baby Belling. Her mother was dressed up for a night out with Eric.
Dorothy seemed to have shed ten years. She wore a blue silky dress pulled up on one shoulder with a clip; it was somewhat vulgar but there was a bounce to her nowadays that suited it. Prudence felt haggard and ghost-ridden.
Dorothy uncorked some wine and poured out two glasses. ‘Hungarian Hárslevelü,’ she said. ‘My latest tipple.’
‘Since when did you know about wine?’
Dorothy blushed. Prudence knew that her mother wanted to talk about Eric but there seemed no room for that just now. Her mother had a glazed look to her; the sheen of happiness. ‘What are we going to do about Lou?’ Prudence asked.
She really wanted to ask: what am I going to do about me? As they talked her mind wandered. Gazing at the striped wallpaper she thought: a new woman has broken up my sister’s relationship. It’s an old one, a previous one, that is breaking up mine. She said: ‘I don’t know what to do about Kaatya.’
Her mother paused, the glass halfway to her mouth. ‘Kaatya? What’s she done?’
‘You know about jealousy. Tell me about it, tell me what to do. I went round there the other day. I saw her. I thought it would make it better but it only made it worse.’ The pipes gurgled; another tenant was running a bath. It seemed the loneliest sound in the world. ‘It’s as if she’s living with us – in his voice, in the air . . .’ Prudence had nobody else to ask. Maddy wouldn’t understand; Louise had her own problems. She certainly couldn’t confide in Stephen. ‘It’s as if they’re still married. They are still married. I thought I was such a sensible person, but she’s there like a ghost.’
‘Even sensible people believe in ghosts,’ said her mother. ‘That’s what’s so frightening about them.’
‘What – sensible people or ghosts?’
Her mother laughed. She said: ‘Meet her. Ask yourself round for a cup of tea. Maybe she’s feeling just the same as you are. Anyway, whatever she’s like, it couldn’t be worse than your imagination. You poor dear.’
You poor dear. Her mother never talked like that. She had acquired a new vocabulary along with her wardrobe.
Prudence left. She waited on the kerb for the traffic to pass. Suddenly, she wished for a grown-up’s hand to slip into hers. She thought: my parents are no longer parents. I have lost them for ever.
She hurried across Titchmere Road. By the time she reached her front door she had made up her mind.
On Saturday morning Robert left home. His loaded BMW scraped the gravel as he pulled away. It was three weeks since Dorothy had detonated the explosion. Since then events had taken on a momentum of their own; both Robert and Louise were helpless. He was moving into a rented flat in London. His mistress would no doubt join him there; nobody had asked.
There was something ignominious about his departure. No big scenes, no tearful send-off. Only Louise and the dog watched him go. It was as if, now it had been decided, everyone just wanted him out of the house, like one of their less popular weekend guests. Louise listened to the engine fading into the distance for the last time. Oh, he would be back to help sort out the house when it was sold, but it was today that he was leaving his family for good. Louise thought: he’s a rat deserting a sinking ship. Robert had never possessed moral courage; in the past he had cheerfully admitted this.
She went into the living room and sat down. Then she thought: maybe he’s courageous to go. What was going to happen to him? There were gaps on the shelves; Robert had taken some of his books. The rest remained. You never read a book. Not unless it’s heavily disguise
d as a copy of Options.
Imogen came into the room. She sat down on the arm of the chair and stroked her mother’s hair, like a daughter in a stage play.
‘Don’t cry, Mum,’ she said.
But it was no good; Imogen started crying too.
Imogen found Jamie in the caravan. He was sitting in a fug of cigarette smoke reading Viz.
‘How could you?’ she cried. ‘How could you just sit here? Mum’s in a terrible state.’ She glared at his bent head. His shoulders shook. It took her a moment to realise that he was giggling. ‘Jamie!’
He pointed to the page. ‘You read Ted and his Giant Testicles?’
‘What’s the matter with you?’
He looked up. ‘Matter? Nothing.’
‘She needs you! All week you’ve done bloody nothing. You’ve hardly even been here – gadding off each night with your horrible friend.’
‘So where were you on Thursday night?’ he asked. ‘A little birdie told me you were getting slaughtered at the Bull’s Head with your hunky blacksmith.’
‘I wasn’t getting slaughtered. I was just there for an hour or two. It was Karl’s chess night.’
‘How sweet.’
He turned the page. She looked at his soft, fair hair – it had been like that since he was little. ‘You aren’t even interested in what’s happening!’ she said.
‘Well spotted.’ He turned the page. ‘Personally, I don’t give a flying fuck. They can all go to hell as far as I’m concerned, except Dad’ll probably shag himself to death first.’
‘Know something? You’re getting to sound just like him. Way you’re going, when you get married you’ll be just the same as Dad –’
‘Think I’m going to get married?’
‘– lying, cheating, selfish, cynical,’ she said. ‘You’ve got a cruel streak, just like him –’
‘You’re so sad.’ He fished for his cigarettes. ‘Grow up, sis. You know bugger-all about blokes. If it’s got a hole, we poke it.’
She flinched. ‘That’s disgusting. Some men aren’t like that.’
‘Oh no?’
‘No!’
‘You are a-fucking-mazing in your fathomless ignorance.’ He flicked his lighter. It didn’t work.